Lytro

Light field camera specialist Lytro promised a cinematographic revolution and they weren't kidding, with the new Lytro Cinema potentially representing as much of a technology shift as the move from analog to digital. The new camera - which, like Lytro's clever but poorly selling consumer cameras, captures not only light but the angle that the light hits the sensor, allowing for a wider range of post-processing options - promises to kill off the traditional green screen for special effects, among other things.

It's no secret that virtual reality is the next big thing in entertainment. It's hard to say just how far out it is in terms of the mainstream market, but there are a lot of big players working on virtual reality technologies. We've been seeing headsets and ways to consume this media, but one of the major hurdles is creating that content. After all, you can't simply go out with a camera, shoot some video, and have that translated into an interactive 3D environment. But one company wants you to be able to do exactly that.

Innovative light field camera specialist Lytro has inked new deals with NASA and the US Department of Defense, among others, launching its Lytro Platform and companion development kit for pushing new ways of implementing the technology. The Lytro Development Kit will consist not only of software but of key parts of the Lytro hardware, like a 41-megapixel camera sensor with C-mount f/2.0 lens, and a dedicated prototyping board, giving third-party developers and hardware manufacturers hitherto-unavailable access to the light field processing engine.

This week an 11-minute documentary called "Emotions in a Different Light" has been released to the web for the public. This documentary is a relatively new way of going about showing off the abilities of a device - the LYTRO ILLUM in this case - with Lytro traveling along with a set of photographers to see what they do with the device in the field.

Lytro's second-generation light-field camera, the Illum, is already prompting controversy among photography fans, with the prospect of a new type of post-processing from what was originally dismissed as a toy. Promising four times the resolution of the first Lytro, the Illum also looks the part: a menacing stealth-black camera that looks like a Sony NEX turned evil. Still, is the world ready for light-field photography, and is it any good?

Lytro has revealed a new light field camera, the Lytro Illum, ditching the odd, toy-like appearance of the original in favor of a prosumer design, improved specs, and a price to match. Still offering the ability to refocus images post-capture, using a new sensor technology that Lytro says has "40-megaray" resolution, the Illum's images can also be adjusted for tilt, perspective shift, and depth of field, even if they weren't taken with those factors in mind originally.

There's a system for shooting photos out there in the world of Apple patents, one that looks to take the light-field camera and make a version of it much, much smaller. Small enough to fit inside an iPhone, as it were. The patent for this system describes the likes of a plenoptic camera, better known as a light-field camera, going so far as to cite the Ren Ng "Lytro" camera as prior art.

We appear to be in an age where the way we capture photos - followed by the way we display them - is in a state of evolution. Today's update from the folks at Lytro unveils a new way to view the photos taken with the Lytro camera - you'll soon be able to see these photos displayed in 3D. With the light field camera created by Lytro, users will be able to see the photos they've captured and processed for Perspective Shift in full 3D mode with a variety of devices.

Lytro has been an awfully quiet company recently. After creating waves by releasing their Lytro camera, which allows to change the depth-of-field after a photo is taken, the company sort of disappeared from the limelight. However, 2014 is expected to be a big year for the company, and they have a lot of new things planned.

Lytro has landed in the UK, with the clever light-field camera finally up for sale, though rivals have already begun to circle. The camera, which allows the user to focus on different parts of the frame after the image has been taken, by recording the angles that light hit the sensor, went on sale in the US in early 2012, and was hailed as somewhere between a curiosity and a real advance in photography.

The Lytro miniature camera just received a fairly significant update today. The company just outed an accompanying iOS app that allows you to share the photos taken on a Lytro with your iOS device. From there, you can do all sorts of stuff that iOS will allow you to do, such as upload it to your Photo Stream or share it with a friend, as well as upload the photos to Lytro's website.

Toshiba is readying a Lytro-style camera that could allow photos taken on smartphones and tablets to be refocused after they're captured, with a complex lens assembly creating data-dense adjustable images. The camera, which is expected to be commercialized in late 2013, grabs 500,000 pictures in one take, The Asahi Shimbum reports, thanks to an identical number of lenses in front of the sensor, each taking a shot with slightly different focus settings.